'Value-added' taxes: wrong way to go

Published 5:02 pm, Wednesday, January 2, 2013

"Tax reform? We need a revolution" (Opinion, Dec. 17) states: "We should be shifting ... taxes on income to taxes on consumption." Thus, retirees who have already paid taxes on income and saved for retirement, and likewise those still saving toward retirement, would be taxed again as they spend.

The article continues: "A better way to raise additional revenue may be to impose a new tax on the value firms add to products, which they can incorporate into the final price to the customer." In Europe a value-added tax is typically 20 percent, raising prices, not in place of but in addition to income tax.

Because expenditures are "bad," under Reagan the term "tax expenditures" was introduced, but its meaning is the money you have remaining after the government collects the rest.

During World War II movie producer Samuel Goldwyn sued in a California court protesting that his California state income tax for a year added to his federal income tax was more than his total income. The wise judge, having no authority to change this, ruled it was up to him to manage his affairs to avoid such situations. Now some small businesses are managing their businesses to be under the threshold of full-time employees at which the high cost of Obamacare takes effect in the beginning of January.

Fingerprint-biometric-scanner technology should replace the antiquated safety toggle on guns. If the owner's hand is not on the grip, the weapon can't fire.

A gun without it is a car without seatbelts.

Adam Lanza's enabler was a home with weapons that anyone could fire -- and he stole them.

What if only the hand of the registered owner could work the weapon? What's the downside? Children would no longer accidentally shoot themselves. If a criminal broke into your home, he could no longer use your weapon against you. A sick individual could not fire someone else's weapons. This would not violate your Second Amendment rights -- it would protect you even more.

Starting in 2015 all guns sold should be required to have a biometric-fingerprint-scanner on the grip, rendering it only viable to the registered owner. This technology is cheap, common and currently used worldwide in security applications to limit access to equipment, systems and information. An organization would initiate the buy-back of old assault weapons. None of this would limit an authorized individual from using their modern gun and exercising their constitutional right.

Make penalties for carrying and owning pre-law assault weapons severe. This would save countless innocent lives.

Ben Quick

Greenwich

Make them pay

To the editor:

Not well known is that Congress in 2005 passed a law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which banned most lawsuits against the firearms industry!

If Congress really did the right thing, instead of orating platitudes, and passed a bill to reverse the present one, it would go a long way toward forcing the gun manufacturers to pay for their privilege of selling deadly merchandise.

The tobacco industry is paying for their sins. The time has arrived for the gun manufacturers to do the same.